


Carved by Silver

by winter_hiems



Category: L'Homme qui rit | The Man Who Laughs - Victor Hugo, The Grinning Man - Philips & Teitler/Grose & Morris & Philips & Teitler/Grose
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blind Character, Blood Drinking, Body Image, Canon Disabled Character, Character Turned Into Vampire, Childhood Friends, Chronic Pain, Cuddling & Snuggling, Daylighter(s), Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, F/M, Familiars, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Human/Vampire Relationship, Immortality, Immortals, Intimacy, Kissing, Light Angst, Magic, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Potions, Scars, Self-Esteem Issues, Supernatural Elements, Tenderness, Vampire Family, Vampire Turning, Vampires, Witchcraft, Witches, canon blind character, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_hiems/pseuds/winter_hiems
Summary: Gwynplaine is a vampire. Three hundred years ago, a vampire killed his parents and cut up his face, and he still doesn’t know the killer’s identity.Dea is a witch. Gwynplaine helps her with her potions.
Relationships: Ann Bradshaw | Lady Trelaw/Linnaeus Clancharlie | Hazlitt Trelaw, Dea/Gwynplaine | Grinpayne | Gwynplaine Trelaw
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

He must have been a beautiful child. 

In ordinary circumstances, mere beauty would not have been enough to save him. 

Beauty had not saved him when he was born – a difficult birth that killed his mother soon after. For him to survive when his mother had not had been mere chance. 

The next time he faced death was when his father died. There was nothing particularly unusual about the death. His father had married at fifty-nine, been sixty when Gwynplaine was born, and was sixty-two when he died. 

The servants left at once, none of them wanting to care for the two-year-old son of a disgraced lord. 

This left the lord’s mansion empty and derelict, except for a two-year old boy who knew how to drink from the lake and from puddles left by rain, and how to eat the fruit that fell in the orchard, but otherwise knew nothing about how to care for himself, and as a result was slowly dying. 

Large empty houses that nobody wants anything to do with tend to attract a certain type of person. 

Lord and Lady Trelaw arrived in the night, as their kind were wont to do. They immediately retired to the cellar before sunrise, and emerged at sunset to inspect the house they had decided to occupy. 

It pleased them exceedingly well. Plenty of thick curtains to nail over the windows, large airy rooms with furniture that was very much to their taste. Switzerland really was a lovely change of scene. 

They were walking down one of the corridors, inspecting the bedrooms as they went along, when they both froze at the same time. They had heard a human heartbeat. 

They found him curled up in a pile of dirty blankets on one of the beds. 

Lord Trelaw looked at Lady Trelaw, the silent look of, _Drinking from this one would be delicious, but we decided that fifteen was the cut-off age._

They had two choices: drive the child out of the mansion, or keep it and care for it. 

After a short discussion, Lord Trelaw knelt by the sleeping boy, and bit into his wrist, careful not to drink, merely to allow his venom to enter the child’s bloodstream. By the time the child woke up, there would be two faint pinpricks on his wrist, which would fade to nothing after a few days. 

When the boy awoke, he had two new parents. 

He must have been a beautiful child. 

*

They re-named him Gwynplaine (both of them deciding that it was a far better name than Fermain), bathed him, found clean clothes for him. 

They arranged for an (evening) delivery of food from the nearest village, which was more than they needed because they had to pretend to be feeding three instead of one. Gwynplaine adapted quickly to sleeping in the day and waking in the night, and when he was old enough to keep a secret, his parents told him that once he’d grown old enough, he would be allowed to drink blood from one of them, and then the three of them would be a family forever. 

“Why can’t I do it now?” he asked them one day. “Why do I have to wait?” 

“Because you’re a child, darling,” his adoptive mother said, ruffling his dark curls. “If we did it now, you’d be a child forever, which could make things difficult for you. We’ll do it when you’re a man. But you won’t have to wait long. Only fifteen or twenty years.” Fifteen or twenty years did not mean much to Lady Trelaw. 

They prepared him for it. Told him about how from a moral standpoint he really ought to only drink from adults, and that he should avoid killing the person he fed from at all costs. They told him everything he would need for the new kind of life he’d lead once he was a man. 

They never had the chance to turn him. 

*

Vampires live a long time – forever, if they are allowed – and long lives breed bitter grievances. What Gwynplaine was too young to know was that his parents were ideological outcasts. No drinking before fifteen? What was the point in that? 

At a gathering some decades before, Clarence, king of England’s vampires, had offered Lord Trelaw a six-year-old girl to drain. He had refused, and the king had never forgiven the slight. 

Vampiric grudges last a long time, and when vengeance is served, it is served very cold indeed. 

This vengeance came in the form of a vampire wearing thick leather gloves to protect his hands from a consecrated silver knife. 

The knife did for the parents, but the assassin hadn’t been told what to do with the child. He hadn’t even known that there was a child. But he could hardly let a boy that had been cared for by Hazlitt Trelaw go free. He also couldn’t risk killing the child, in case Clarence decided that he wanted to do something with it later. 

Cuts to either side of the child’s face. Gwynplaine had enough vampire in him for the silver to burn. 

The assassin left him there, bleeding on the polished wood floor of the ballroom. 

Once he was sure the assassin was gone, the boy ran. 

He didn’t know where he was going, only following the road. When the sun rose, he was almost surprised. It had been years since he was last awake during the day. 

He kept walking. 

It began to snow. 

His face was red and raw. The venom from his adoptive father meant that he healed faster than a normal human, but that meant little when the agony made him stagger with every step. 

He was leaving red drops on the snow. 

*

He tripped over a lump in the ground, the jolt waking him up from the trance of pain he’d been in for… hours? Days? He didn’t know anymore. 

The thing he’d tripped over started wailing. Light-headed from blood loss, he bent over the mound. The mound was the corpse of a woman; the crying thing a tiny baby. A drop of blood fell on her cheek, and Gwynplaine reached down to wipe it off. The baby reached out with a small hand and gripped his finger, and just like that he couldn’t leave her. 

Gwynplaine picked up the baby, held her to his chest, and walked on. 

*

The caravan they came across belonged to a man who called himself a travelling doctor because it was not socially acceptable to declare oneself a sorcerer. 

He took in the two children, gave milk to the baby and bandaged the face of the boy. His familiar, Homo, sniffed at the newcomers curiously. 

“Strange,” he said, observing Gwynplaine. “You ought to have passed out from blood loss long ago. Unless…” 

He took one of the cloths that had got bloodied when he bandaged Gwynplaine’s face and tipped a few drops onto it from a bottle he’d taken down from a high shelf. 

The blood on the cloth turned a pale pinkish-silver. “Hmph. Not a vampire yet, though a mouthful of vampire blood would be sufficient to turn you. But not a thrall either, your eyes are too bright. Someone must have taken care of you – a pet, perhaps? You must have displeased them, for them to do that to your face. A vampire who was angry for a small reason would merely have drained you or killed you quickly.” 

“They weren’t angry,” said Gwynplaine, his voice muffled by bandages and pain. “There was a man. He killed them.” 

“Who? Did you see who it was?” 

Gwynplaine shook his head. “Not sure. He was fast.” 

“Vampires are like that,” said Ursus philosophically. 

*

His face healed, but the scars burned. 

The children grew older, grew closer, fell in love. 

Gwynplaine had no potential for magic, but Dea had ability, so Ursus taught her. Gwyn would work at her side, reading out the spells for her and telling her what colour her potion was turning. 

Of course, children grow up, and sorcerers don’t move in packs (witch covens are rarer than you might think), so soon it was time for Dea to find her own area of the world to practise in. 

As an adult, Gwynplaine realised that his birth father had owned several estates, and Castle Clancharlie in Scotland was unoccupied, so he and Dea left Switzerland and took a boat to England. 

When they got to London, Gwynplaine had to make a decision. 

He wanted – no, he needed – to find the man who’d killed his parents and cut his face. But the murderer was a vampire and immortal, whereas Gwynplaine was mortal and already twenty-four. 

All he would need to turn was a mouthful of vampire blood, but that carried its own price; never seeing the sun again, a thirst for blood, and, worst of all, the memories of the time before he was turned would blur. 

He would forget details about his parents’ murder. 

He would forget the finer points of life with his parents. 

He might even forget his first kiss with Dea. 

But he couldn’t risk staying human, couldn’t risk aging and dying without justice for his pain. 

So when they were in London, he tracked down a vampire. 

High-ranking vampires styled themselves with noble titles. This particular one called herself the Duchess Josiana. She resided in a stately home on the outskirts of the city where every room seemed to be a boudoir. 

Gwynplaine was very upfront about what he needed from her: he’d already been bitten by a vampire, he wanted to make the full change. Would she let him drink some of her blood? 

Josiana said she would, but only if he let her have a look at the face he was concealing behind a red scarf. 

Wishing he didn’t have to but reminding himself that the price could have been much higher, Gwynplaine showed her his face, and Josiana agreed immediately. 

After he’d swallowed a cupful of her blood, Gwyn could feel the change starting in him, and he fell to his knees. 

Josiana stroked his face. “There there, it won’t be so bad after a few days.” Her voice was a purr. “You know, you could stay here with me. With a face like that, you’d make such a… diverting consort.” 

In that instant, Gwynplaine remembered Dea. He had to get to Dea before the change started in full. He struggled to his feet, staggered away from Josiana, and hurried through the streets of London until he came to where he and Dea had parked their caravan in Southwark. 

He opened the door and saw Dea turn her head at his entrance. “Gwynplaine?” 

He tried to reply, he really did, but Josiana’s blood was burning through his throat and chest, and his scars were hurting more than ever before, so all he could do was collapse on the floor of the Green Box as every nerve in his body began to burn. 

*

It was dark when he woke. To an ordinary human it would have been pitch black, but Gwynplaine’s changed eyes could pick out every detail in the caravan. Groaning slightly at the pain in his face, he sat up. 

A sound in the corner of the caravan as a woman turned to face him. He recognised her, he was sure of it. She was someone important to him, someone he loved. 

Dea, yes, her name was Dea. 

The rest of his memories returned to him quite quickly after that, though they were dimmer and more blurred than before. 

“Gwynplaine?” asked Dea, “Are you awake? It’s been three days. It’s supposed to be over by now.” 

“Yes,” he said, “I’m awake.” 

*

They made their way north, travelling at night. By day, the Green Box rested, its shutters nailed shut, because Gwynplaine could see in the dark now, and the dark had never meant anything to Dea. Sometimes they stopped near towns so that Gwynplaine could feed. 

In this fashion, they made their way to Castle Clancharlie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As he got older, Gwynplaine found out why his parents were killed, but he never knew who did the deed.
> 
> The Grinning Man and The Man Who Laughs lend themselves quite well to a vampiric adaptation: you’ve got decadent nobles, exiled lords, and silver-scar burns to mimic Gwynplaine’s chronic pain. Similarly, having Homo be Ursus’ familiar works well for a magic AU. Ursus as a travelling sorcerer was also a great fit.
> 
> In The Man Who Laughs, Linnaeus Clancharlie lives in Swizerland after his exile, and the details about Gwyn’s birth mother and his father’s death are all as they are in the book.
> 
> I found it quite interesting to write Linnaeus Clancharlie/Hazlitt Trelaw and Anne Bradshaw/Lady Trelaw as four separate people.
> 
> “said Ursus philosophically” – yes, this is an intentional pun on him being Ursus the Philosopher in the book.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome <3
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. I am not making money from this work.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a good thing to have a witch live nearby. This was something that almost every resident of the town Clancharlie agreed with. It helped that she was a white witch, not concerning herself with the darker arts from either personal choice or lack of affinity with them. 

So anybody who wanted a cure or a luck charm need only walk or drive up the road to the castle and knock on the door, and if she wasn’t busy with an important spell then Dea would come answer it, a large black wolf at her heels. 

There was some debate in the town as to whether the wolf, Mojo, was a familiar, a guide dog, or a literal seeing-eye dog – as in, Dea could see through his eyes. 

(It was the first two, but nobody had ever asked Dea, so the debate continued.) 

She was universally regarded as a woman who made her spells and potions well and set her prices fairly, so aside from bored teenagers making things up on Halloween, dark stories about her were fairly thin on the ground. 

In fact, there was really only one story that anyone focused on; the man who lived with her. 

He was rarely seen up close. On occasion he would be there to help Dea with handing over an order, or he would be glimpsed walking outside the castle as evening drew on. 

There were a variety of rumours about him, sparked by the fact that the lower half of his face was always kept covered by a scarf. 

He was a ghost that Dea had raised, the ghost of a lord who’d been murdered in the castle. 

_He_ was her familiar, not Mojo. 

He was a monster, held in thrall by his love for her, and if that love should ever wane then he would run wild, killing and maiming all in sight. 

He was a vampire. 

(“Now hang on a minute,” people would interject after hearing that theory, “People have seen him outside with the sun up, how can he be a vampire?”) 

How indeed? 

There would be no answers coming from Dea. If anyone asked her about him then she would just say, “Oh, that’s Gwynplaine, he’s my boyfriend,” but people couldn’t really believe that a man who kept his face covered and never ventured down to the village was only Dea’s boyfriend. There had to be something else to him. 

*

The clothes were centuries out of date, silks and velvets that he hadn’t touched since the eighteenth century, but vampire fashion was always far behind modern clothing, so it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Gwynplaine’s shirt was fine cotton and his waistcoat was high-grade silk. The coat was full-length velvet; a vampire lord must look the part, and he was a lord twice over, from both his birth father and his adoptive parents. 

Of course, the outfit wouldn’t be complete without red lace covering the lower half of his face to hide the scars from a silver knife which were currently sending fingers of fire licking across his jaw. Gwynplaine leaned against the doorway, closing his eyes against the pain. Three hundred years, and the silver’s touch still made itself felt. 

Dea heard the rustle of fabric and turned towards the doorway. “Are you ready to go?” 

“Yes.” He was unable to disguise the pain in his voice. 

Taking practised steps towards him – Dea knew the inside of her laboratory to the inch – she found him leaning against the door frame and rested a hand against his chest. “Are you sure you can travel while you’re hurting?” 

“I’ll have to. A new vampire queen of England… I can’t not turn up. It would be an insult, a worse insult than the one that killed my parents.” 

Neither of them said the obvious thing: if Gwynplaine, like his father, was offered a child to drain during the vampire meet, then he, like his father, would refuse. Which wouldn’t just be _like_ the insult that killed his parents; it would be _exactly_ the insult that had killed his parents. If such a thing happened, then history might repeat itself; a silver-wielding assassin sent to Castle Clancharlie, sent to take a knife to Gwynplaine, and Dea too, for she would be tainted by association. Even with Dea’s witchery and Gwynplaine’s vampiric strength, they might not survive such a thing. 

The last vampire king, Clarence, had been sadistic and cruel. Now that he was dead, his daughter had claimed his title. Rumour said that she was insane. By nightfall, Gwynplaine would know if that was true. 

Dea drew away from him and turned to her worktable, picking up a glass filled with blood that had a slight golden sheen on top. “Here. It’ll keep the sun off you until evening.” 

“Thank you.” 

Gwyn uncovered his face and drained the glass, fangs sliding down automatically at the scent of blood, then retracting once he’d drunk his fill. The herbs that Dea had stewed it with added a strange aftertaste, as well as protection form the sun’s rays, allowing him to make the journey to London during daylight hours. 

As much as she could, Dea tried to ease the burden of vampirism from him. The daylight herbs in his doses of blood, allowing him to walk under the sun. The requests for blood donations from her customers – disguised as a need for potion ingredients – so that he didn’t have to go to the town to feed. A few decades ago she’d even gifted him with an aluminium-backed mirror, so that for the first time in nearly three hundred years, he could see his own reflection. 

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that his reflection horrified him. It had been a thoughtful gift, and useful for checking that his hair was neat, but that didn’t change the ridged, slashed fact of his scars. Gwynplaine had told her many times how they looked; ugly, horrifying. Dea always replied that she loved him, that he was beautiful, that the scars didn’t matter to her. The guilt never entirely went away. Neither did the wondering, the three centuries of trying to remember who it was that had done the deed. Changing into a vampire had faded the memories somewhat, and even before then, Gwyn knew that his recollection of that night had been far from clear. 

He didn’t hold much hope that the gathering of England’s vampires around their new queen would shed any light on that. Even for vampires, three hundred years was a long time, and there was unlikely to be a record of such a thing. 

Gwynplaine set the glass down. Dea heard it, her witch’s senses almost as sharp as his vampiric ones, and closed the distance between them with a kiss that was short and soft, followed by another that was longer and lingering. “Come back as soon as you can. I’ll worry about you, down there in London at court.” 

“I’ll do my best to be careful.” He didn’t know exactly what being careful might entail. His appearance had prevented him from approaching others of his kind since Josiana, so he would have to settle for universal caution. “I left you a vial of venom in the storeroom,” he told her, “So that you’ll have something to work on while I’m away.” 

Properly distilled, vampire venom was a highly effective sedative, and the general reluctance of any vampire to have their venom extracted meant that it was incredibly rare. Dea could make potions that most witches only dreamt of, and the excess distilled venom was sold for a very comfortable profit. 

“Thanks. I’m sure I’ll find something useful to do with it.” 

Another kiss, and Gwynplaine was tugging the lace back up to cover his scars. A final, tender embrace between the two of them, and he turned to go. 

*

He returned staggering with pain. 

Dea had heard his step in the hallway and came out of her workroom to find him, taking her hand off Mojo as soon as she had a good idea of where he was. 

She reached for him where he was half-collapsed against the wall, found his hand, and supported him back onto his feet. 

He barely registered her guiding him through the castle’s halls into a comfortably appointed living room (with blackout curtains nailed over the window, not to mention shutters on the outside). 

Dea eased him onto a chaise longue and they settled with Gwynplaine’s head in her lap. She squeezed his hand, which she still hadn’t let go of. “What happened? Is it just your face?” 

“Yes,” he gasped, through the pain of his silver-burned nerves. “But Dea, at the vampire meet – I found him.” 

“Found who?” 

“The man who cut my face, I found him, it was him. At first I didn’t recognise him, but the more time went on, the more I remembered, until I was certain.” 

Dea clenched his hand involuntarily. “What happened?” 

“At first, I was going to kill him.” 

He heard her breath catch in her throat. Gwyn knew exactly what she’d be imagining; neither of them had ever witnessed a vampiric duel, but by reputation they were fast, brutal, and bloody. 

Teeth and claws. 

Fangs and fists. 

Gwynplaine could fight, could even use a sword if the occasion called for it, but he was not vicious. He did not have a killer’s instinct. 

“Did you?” Dea’s voice sounded strangely high-pitched as she broke the silence. 

“No.” The single word came out like a moan. The silver scars refused to grant him a reprieve. “I looked at him, and… he was a lackey, Dea. Just some servant that Clarence sent to Switzerland to do his dirty work. He seemed so empty. All twisted up inside. I won the duel, I was faster than him, I had his throat bare and all I’d need to do was bite and – but I didn’t. I looked down at him and he was cringing, pathetic. He wasn’t worth becoming a killer for. So I let him live.” 

“I’m glad,” Dea said softly, the fingers of her free hand stroking his hair gently. “I’m glad that you found answers. And I’m very glad that you didn’t kill him. Even if you had, I would still love you, you know I’ll always love you, but I wouldn’t want you to have to live with the fact that you’d taken a life.” 

They lapsed into silence for a while, until Gwyn said, “I met Queen Angelica.” 

“And?” 

“I think she probably is mad, in her own way. But that doesn’t mean she’s not good. After I spared Barkilphedro – the man who cut my face, his name was Barkilphedro – we talked. She agreed with me about a lot of things, no wonder she and her father fought so much. She wants to introduce a minimum age for feeding from humans. More restrictions on taking thralls. And no more killing to feed.” 

“Not everyone will like that. Especially not the older vampires.” 

“Yes, but –” Gwynplaine shifted a little until he was looking up at Dea more directly. “She asked me to help her with the reforms. I said yes. I’d like to help, and it’s the sort of thing that my parents would have wanted me to do. Besides, it’s about time that I found something really useful to do with myself. It does mean that I’ll have to travel down to London sometimes. We can’t do everything with letters.” 

“Alright. I’ll miss you while you’re gone, though.” 

“You could come with me.” 

“Really?” Vampires didn’t tend to mix with witches. 

“Angelica said she’d like to meet you.” 

Dea smiled. “You told her about me.” 

“Well, yes. She wondered if I would marry Josiana to, well, calm her down a little, and I had to give a reason why I couldn’t.” 

Leaning down, Dea kissed his forehead, then his lips. “You could marry me, you know. We wouldn’t be able to do it in a church, but they have other places that you can get married these days.” 

“Yes, but –” Gwynplaine sat up sharply, then gripped the back of the chaise longue as a fresh wave of pain overcame him. After a few tense seconds of holding on tightly to keep himself upright, he managed to end up sitting opposite Dea. “Dea, I know that you love me, but you’ve never seen me. And I’d like to marry you, I truly would. But it wouldn’t be fair. You’d never fully know what you’d tied yourself to.” 

Dea sighed. “Oh, Gwyn…” She traced her fingers up his arm, across his shoulder, up the side of his neck until she found his cheek and the ridged scars, slightly cooler to the touch than the rest of his skin. She brushed her fingertips over them gently, almost reverently. “I know that these are here. I know how they make people view you, and I know that you’ll never like them. I’ve known you my whole life. I know _you_ , all of you, all the most important parts. I wouldn’t be throwing myself away on you. I wouldn’t be tying myself to you by marrying you, I’d just be doing something that would make both of us happy – or at least, I’d be happy. I wouldn’t want to marry you if it would make you feel guilt, but I want you to understand that there’s nothing to feel guilty about.” 

He raised his hand to hold Dea’s hand lightly where it was still poised over the carved smile on his face. “Dea, you would have to be sure. I… when I met Angelica, she asked me to show my face and she didn’t mind the scars. Not one bit. So perhaps we can… But you would need to be sure.” 

Dea beamed. “My love, I’ve been sure for three hundred years.” 

“We’re engaged, then?” He could feel himself blushing slightly; he hadn’t quite been able to keep the hopeful tone out of his voice. 

She pulled him into a kiss which tasted like a long, cool drink of water. “Of course we are.” 

The scar tissue always pulled a little when Gwynplaine smiled, but in that moment, he didn’t mind it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time skip! Gwynplaine hasn’t aged because Vampirism, and Dea hasn’t aged for Witch Reasons. These days, it’s more socially acceptable to be a witch. Ursus visits Gwyn and Dea in Scotland sometimes, but he prefers to be on the move.
> 
> Normally Gwyn wears black jeans and a Loose ShirtTM à la TGM, but to go to the vampire meet he has to dress fancy to fit in, hence he’s wearing his lord’s outfit from TGM.
> 
> For those who might be interested: Gwynplaine has drunk Dea’s blood exactly once. They were in a bad situation and he was starving. Dea offered, but he refused to drink from her, then he passed out. To save his life, she cut her palm and dripped blood into his mouth until he regained consciousness. She tasted delicious. He felt guilty for years afterwards.


End file.
